Peaking Mentally at the Right Time
It’s not enough to perform your best physically; you also have to be able to peak mentally. While the physical does impact the mental, you can’t just wing it if the task is important to you. To me, that was the difference in the Super Bowl. But the Patriots in particular seem to be able to consistently peak at the right time, and that’s how they’ve won six Super Bowls.
In the lead up to the game, I watched a clip of the head coach Bill Belichick. I’m a long-time Bills fan, so he is definitely not my favorite person. The clip I viewed was Belichick talking with his defense, telling them to keep doing what they were supposed to do, and later in the game they would get the results they wanted. Defense is his specialty. Whatever the Patriots were doing on defense worked the entire game. Not so much on offense. Except for the touchdown drive. They used a formation they hadn’t used before, used it four plays in a row, and scored the touchdown that decided the game. They were ready to peak at exactly the correct moment, because it seemed like a different team on that drive.
No matter what you do, remember that physical training is just part of the story. You have to practice and prepare mentally to execute at exactly when you need to perform. The physical and the mental work in concert, and to ignore one puts the other at risk. There’s still one more thing you have to do and I’ll finish this up on Saturday.
What are you prepared to do today?
